“My friends in America, they’re all fighting their own demons with Trump, but they all look and say: ‘man your human rights record is worse than ours’,” he said.

“We should stand back as a country, the lucky country, and say: ‘how can we help?’ Not be afraid.”

In Melbourne, Refugee Action Collective co-chairman David Glanz said he and others felt they’d been hitting their heads on a brick wall.

How Australia finally started to care about asylum seekers and refugees on Nauru

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“You ask yourself how we can be in a situation where children are resigning themselves to death under the so-called protection of the Australian government,” he told hundreds of supporters.

“Well, today I think we can say we are beginning to see the cracks in that wall.”

The health of asylum seekers on Nauru has shot to prominence in the past few weeks, with Scott Morrison under immense pressure to bring sick children and their families to Australia.

Eleven children were evacuated earlier this week, leaving 52 on the island. Refugee advocates say another four kids have since left Nauru. Mr Morrison said about 30 people had been taken off Nauru over the last few weeks.

“Those numbers have been coming down and we will continue to work on that,” Morrison told reporters in Sydney.

“We have just been getting on and doing it like a responsible and compassionate government should.”